The present invention relates to a new and useful electrical connector, that is particularly useful in a medical care facility such as a hospital or nursing home, where frequent movement of a hospital bed, and movement of machinery and/or equipment about the hospital bed, is common, and that movement can damage or dislodge existing electrical connectors from their wall sockets. The electrical circuit connector of the invention is also useful with devices that are in jeopardy of damage (such as phone jacks, laptop jacks, or equipment) that would be located in the vicinity of moving objects such as furniture or beds, and plugged into a wall outlet (socket) located near furniture items or beds.
The present invention also provides a new and useful electrical coupling structure, that provides an electrical coupling that extends away from the circuit connector and can be used to securely provide electrical connection between components that are thus purposefully extended away from the wall socket. The electrical coupling comprises first and second coupling parts, and structure for releasably securing the first and second coupling parts to each other. The first and second coupling parts have respective mating portions that are coupled together to provide an electrical connection between the coupling parts, and the structure for releasably securing the first and second coupling parts to each other comprises a device that is configured to urge the coupling parts together and to provide a releasable lock that holds the coupling parts together and is releasable to enable the coupling parts to be separated, to break the electrical connection between the coupling parts.
Each of the low profile circuit connector and the coupling structure of the present invention provides a new and useful way of protecting existing electrical outlets (or electrical couplings) from trauma and destruction by preventing them from being dislodged by movement of the hospital bed, or scraped off of the wall by passing (moving) machinery, hospital beds, furniture, equipment and vehicles during the normal use of the bed, furniture, the machinery, or equipment.
Electrical plug-ins have been used for decades to connect electrically powered devices to electrical outlets quite efficiently. With the advent of more modern equipment designed to function in tight spaces such as the new “low beds” in hospitals and nursing homes, the frequent result is that the bed by moving up and down as it is designed can easily scrape the electrical plug-ins of electrical equipment as it moves up and down against the wall—often the plug in of the bed itself—completely or partially off the wall, causing damage to the plug-ins, to the equipment that the plug-ins serve, and to the electrical outlets themselves and creating a fire hazard or increasing the personal risk of shock or injury to the electrician who is required to undo this damage and repair it. Frequent strategies of using screw attachments to “track” wires across the wall only increase the exposure and risk of damage to the wiring; tactics of moving the patient's bed away from the wall only increases the chance for injury for the patient when falling between the bed and the wall.
Many devices have been constructed to protect the electrical outlet from weather conditions, from children, from inappropriate use, from theft, but none have done so with the purpose or consideration of attempting to create a protective cover for outlets to prevent them from being literally scraped off the wall with subsequent attendant damage, costs, injuries.